Macias and Caruso met at the Steady Grindin' Award ceremony hosted by fellow artist Joseph "Sentrock" Perez last summer and started to sketch out ideas for the SPA grant proposal soon after.

"We are team dream crushers, and we always bring the funk," says Caruso.

Though the two artists have never collaborated before, their stylistic sensibilities seem to go hand-in-hand. "We both have a naturalistic focus in our work so we just brought that to an aquatic setting," says Caruso. "The Phoenix canals have a certain lore about them though so we wanted to draw our canal creatures as gnarly as possible."

Both artists are incredibly active in the Downtown community as well -- Caruso is currently working on a mural on Central and Thomas and Macias is participating in "The Arcade Show" at Parazol this weekend.

Here's to hoping these this won't be the last collaborative work from these two. Make sure to check out their aquatic creations this weekend -- the canal will refill during the day on Monday, February 4, when the creatures will swim back home.